The Dead Rat and The Self-Proclaimed Witch

Run, run, keep running. The longer you run, the more you realize, the bigger your fear becomes. Now, you have run too far, and it threatens to consume you. Once consumed, there will be nothing but a cold skeleton. 

"Enjoy your lunch, everyone. Remember, the test is this Friday." Mr. Camron was scrolling through something on his laptop, heavily enthralled with the screen resting in front of him. He was in a bad mood. The entire class could tell. 

Ray left the class with his backpack in hand. He sighed. Word had gotten out about his untimely plunge. Most people didn't care. At most, it was just light gossip. He was easily forgettable, after all. He was relieved that people were not talking about it. The memory of being submerged still bothered him. He talked with Aki over the phone later that night. He apologized on behalf of the culprit, whom he had definitely confronted. Aki had a sense of justice that was rooted in personal choice and individuality. He refused to drink at the party, although he didn't condemn others for drinking. That was their choice. As long as it didn't harm others, he didn't care. 

Ray entered the cafeteria. It was teriyaki again. Somehow. "When are you guys going to run out of teriyaki?" He said to the lunch lady. She gave him a dull look and then placed a spoonful of teriyaki and rice on his plate. The teriyaki sauce was viscous and had a tint of gray. "Tomorrow, we had extra that we didn't want to waste. Now please put your pin." The lunch lady's voice was rough. 

Ray put in his code, thanked her, and then looked toward the table he used to always sit at. Since he was always one of the first people in the cafeteria, it was empty. He frowned and made his way to a small four-person lunch table. It was usually vacant. Now it had one more occupier. It would be quieter than his usual spot. That was nice. 

Ray couldn't help but shake the idea that he was some sort of outcast. He couldn't even hold onto the fringes of a group. 'Whatever, I never was part of their group anyway.' Ray began to eat his teriyaki, hesitating before the first bite. He was sure he saw something squirm. 

"Teriyaki again," Aki said as he sat beside Ray, displaying his home-cooked meal. Ray stopped eating for a moment to inspect the smiling Aki. Ray glanced at the table where he normally sat with a grin. "Yeah, I'm going to stop getting hot lunch soon." Ray poked a piece of chicken with his spork that was made from a flimsy plastic. A warm feeling passed over him. He wasn't going to sit alone today. 

"Not sitting in the usual spot?" Ray questioned his friend. 

Aki made his expression purposefully confused, "My usual spot is with you." 

"I'm glad," 

"I'm glad you're glad." After the party, Aki decided that he only viewed one person in this school as a friend by choice. Everyone else was by proxy. If something happened, he would stand by him. 

"That party was pretty lame. No one talked about anything interesting." Aki found that he didn't hold most of his peers in high regard in some areas. 

"Really?" Ray didn't believe him. 

"Yeah," At Aki's response, Ray's teriyaki chicken suddenly tastes sweeter.

—After School—

"Here," Ray took the beef jerky and tea from the cashier with a smile. The automatic sliding doors made way for a beam of sunlight that illuminated Ray as he exited the store, a piece of jerky dangling in his mouth. 

Ray was feeling content. It's nice to know that years of friendship couldn't dissolve away, at least not that easily. 

Recently, Ray couldn't shake the feeling that something was wrong. His intuition shouted at him from the furthest reaches of his soul. It all started when he witnessed three murders by a physically-empowered stranger. Then everything seemed to speed up. The old, slow life that he was used to living was slowly being ripped into tatters. He was probably just paranoid. A few unlikely events in a row would make anyone seem unlucky or lucky.

After getting approached by Lily, Ray decided it was best to drop the matter, no matter how much he wanted to dig deeper. He was thinking, what if he had powers beyond human limits? What would his life be like? What would he do with them? 'Like that will ever happen, I'll just live out my mediocre life. Peace is good.' 

Before Ray could hop onto his bike, his attention was usurped by a faint noise coming from the narrow passage sandwiched between the store's side and a small apartment complex resembling an urban alley. The scuffling of tiny feet and faint rustling permeated through the passage. Ray began to move forward, the noise slowly. The sounds grew as the distance between them lessened. Now, he could hear the occasional crunch and squeak. He peeked past the corner into the pseudo-alley. Resting on the floor was a large, almost completely eaten corpse. The dead flesh was falling apart, and the dark fur barely held on to the few spots it could. It was grotesque. 

A group of frenzied rays were feasting on the large corpse, which itself was a much larger rat. Much larger than Ray thought possible, it was the size of a fat dog. Ray could feel his stomach turning inside out. The image was visceral and disgusting. He watched as rats used their teeth to tear out small parts of the dead rat and then consumed it with a starved fever, slowly ripping it apart, a few softer body bits resting on the floor beneath the corpse only to be eaten a moment later. Liquids and blood pooled on the floor, and the army of hungry rodents fought violently for their share. 

Ray backed away from the alley, shocked, and went back into the store and up to the nearest employee. "Um, you have a rat problem outside." 

Ray left the store, leaving a frightened employee behind. Ray was uneasy. Something was definitely wrong. He rode past the barking chihuahua on Wilmore. The homes and buildings of his neighborhood stood unbelievably still, believing that if they were still enough, nothing would change. Ray began to crank up the bicycle's speed, trees flying by his peripheral. Ray stopped his bike. Were things wrong or just changing? 

He had parked in front of the decrypted home on Sourmoune. The more he looked at it, the more broken and mismanaged it seemed. He would not be surprised if it was abandoned. The windows were boarded up, and the roof's dark tiling had the same amount of order as a messy jigsaw. The reason he stopped, however, was not to witness the strange-looking house. It was the cat on its untrimmed lawn. The cat stared at him with a single working eye. A large scar embraced the other. Its gray tail unceremoniously shook in the daylight. It recognized him. It was mocking him. 

Ray lifted up his arm, showing the cat its accomplishment, "You know you changed my opinions on cats ever so slightly." Ray had slightly lost it because now he was talking to clueless cats. The cat continued to sit still, looking directly at Ray. Ray lowered his bike somewhere safe and began to sneak toward the cat. Before he could get anywhere close, the cat ran back and gracefully jumped onto the windowsill of an open window in the front of the home. It sat on the still and stared at him. Ray almost gave up; he had better things to do than to have beef with a cat, but then it stuck out its tongue at him.

"Cats don't do that!" Ray yelled at the cat in disbelief as he started to approach the feline rapidly. A heated Ray moved with an unorthodox vigor. Right before Ray could get close enough to touch the cat, it jumped inside. Ray peeked through the window. It was dark and dusty. The only thing that Ray could make was the stairs leading to the second floor and a few pieces of furniture down the hall.

The decorations were dated and bizarre. Ray found himself staring at an analog clock that was shaped into an abstract wooden face. Ray stopped his little house tour and returned to his cat search.

A voice came from below. "Admiring Charles, child?" 

Ray jumped, "What the hell." Crouching in the home right below the window Ray was looking through was a middle-aged woman with untamed hair, which would make a wonderful home for a bird.

"I've been expecting you." She said with a toothy grin and a faint Russian accent. 

"You haven't been sitting there waiting for me, right?" Ray was deeply uncomfortable. 

"Yes, I have. My back is in an immense amount of pain and discomfort. It has become a very stiff board." She outstretched her arms and gave Ray a "help me please" look, "Would you do a great service for me and help me up." The woman spoke with erratic emphasis. 

"Wait, did you say that you've been waiting for me?" Ray asked quizzically, his discomfort growing. 

"Yes, ever since Beatrice scratched you, she has told me plenty about her exploits." Ray glanced at the wound he had just acquired from that wretched cat, probably the worst cat he had ever seen. An idea crossed Ray's mind: what if a mentally ill woman escaped confinement and sought shelter in an abandoned home? What exactly would that look like? 

"You've been seeing things lately, yes, things you can't explain." Ray paused, his heart skipping a beat. How would she know about that?

"How do you know?" Ray was overwhelmed by a newly fostered feeling that had only recently begun to bloom, an indescribable anomaly he had never felt before, a feeling that made his eyes spin in his sleep, and his daydreams go beyond imagination. 

The strange woman flashed her toothy grin once again. Attempting to capitalize on his curiosity, she spoke in a grand tone, "Because I am a witch!" 

The feeling in Ray immediately faded, "A witch, really?" Ray was hesitant to believe her. Ray noted her disheveled appearance. Well, she did fit the description. 

"Of course, my family comes from a whole line of witches. The…well, the name doesn't matter. I have a cauldron to prove it." The woman's wrinkled face displayed her pain, "Now, can you help me up." 

Ray didn't want to believe it, but at the moment, he was sitting in the abode of a woman whom he considered likely insane. Turns out that the house wasn't abandoned. The witch just liked how it looked. Everything was more or less properly maintained. She was making tea in the kitchen. The curtains were parted, letting sunlight filter its way into the antique dining room. 

Ray was sitting at the dining room table, considering getting up and leaving. Before he could retreat, she came back with two cat-shaped mugs filled to the brim with tea. "Here you are," Ray thanked her. It was too late to leave now.

"Let's cut to the chase. As you know, I am a witch, Prelli the witch. I can see the future in my dreams." Prelli puffed out her chest slightly.

"Oh, so like an oracle." Ray had read some mythos regarding oracles.

"No. I am a witch who sees the future in her dreams. I would never want to be compared to an oracle. Oracles disgust me." She stuck out her tongue as she mixed sugar into her tea. Ray glanced at the sugar; he would prefer to have some, but he was never planning on drinking the tea anyway. 

"Have you met an oracle then?" 

"Nope." She said plainly.

Ray was dumbfounded, "Oh, so why do they disgust you." 

"They just do. You can't question a witch child." 

"Right." Ray was getting impatient, "So why did you want to talk to me?" 

"Ah, yes, as you know, I see the future in my dreams. It is erratic and uncontrollable, but some nights, I get a fractured glimpse. That's how I knew you would come by my window." Ray instinctively leaned closer out of curiosity. Her knowing he would approach her house could be a coincidence, or it could be something else, something magical. "You have come across a vicious murderer and girl split into one, haven't you? My dreams have revealed to me that sometime later, you will be the one to stop her." 

Ray was dead silent. If Prelli knew about the incident at the park, then there was a certain validity to what she was saying. If what she was saying was really the future, then was it destined to happen? "How do I know you are not lying?"

"Well, you trusted me enough to enter my home." Ray was at a loss for words. He did really enter this stranger's home, didn't he? 

"Don't worry if you still don't trust me," Prelli redirected her gaze at Ray's untouched tea, "Or my beverages. Then you can just wait. Tomorrow, there will be another death." Prelli got distracted when Beatrice entered the dining room with a soft purr, she desperately beckoned them over to her lap, but Beatrice seemed uninterested. Ray gave the cat a dirty look.

"Beatrice never plays nicely, does she? Oh yes, I almost forgot to mention, if you don't stop her, you will die, and many others." Prelli spoke casually as if his impending death didn't matter too much. Ray suddenly became very lightheaded. A desperate urge to deny what the witch was saying surfaced. "Okay, this is ridiculous. You're right. I shouldn't have trusted you enough to come inside." Ray got up from the table, anxious to leave. The promise of death did not sit well with him.

"But you did. Don't worry. Come back if you ever need help with your life. It's like I have much to do anyway." Indeed, she was very bored most of the day. She spent much of her time watching over her cats. Ray ignored her and fled the witch's home, he raced through the front yard, his head spinning. Prelli watched him leave with a satisfied sip of tea.